Everything is Not What it Seems
by shadowstarr
Summary: Takes place a little bit after "Fang", so if you don't want Fang spoilers, don't read. Pretty much my idea of the next book in the series. Strange er things than usual are happening to our favorite bird kids. Poor Max is so confused. Let it begin.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I fixed the chapter up, so if you read this before and are confused, that's why it's completely different. :)**

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"Gazzy, you throw one more stink bomb into Nudge's room and I swear I will personally staple you to the living room ceiling by your wings and watch you hang there like a very flatulent piñata!"

Just a normal old threat in casa de Bird kid.

If you're just joining the party now, and you haven't been following our story, welcome to the Wonderful World of Insanity. Population: us. Location: You'll never know. Watching events go by in our humble abode is like watching an episode of Full House.

Kinda.

Just subtract the sappy music, add some mutants into the mix, and voila. We even have our own little cute blond girl. (Granted, that cute blond girl is a borderline megalomaniac with violent tendencies and too many weird powers to count, but still. At least she's blond, right?

..Okay, so not very much like Full house at all. But you get the picture.)

Speaking of cute little psychopaths…

"Max, can you do this for me? I think it's stuck." Angel looked up at me, her deceptively innocent baby blues full of frustration. She pointed to the comb that had lost itself in her curly hair.

"Uh..sure, Ange, come onto my lap." Angel obliged, which was very unlike her as of late. Recently the two of us hadn't exactly been on the same page. We didn't really speak as much as we used too.

I wrestled with the comb until it was released from her snarls.

"There you go."

"Thanks."

But Angel didn't get off of my lap. Now this was strange. Angel hadn't actually acted her age (seven) for quite a few months now. Sometimes it was hard to remember that she was actually a little kid, mostly because, despite her exterior, she gave off an adult impression after awhile of knowing her.

I felt her forehead. "Angel, you alright?"

"Yeah," she said, frowning up at me. "Why?"

I shook my head. "No reason."

Maybe she was sick, and that was why she wasn't being herself. Come to think of it, she did look a little pale…

But before I could muse any more about that, I heard a crash coming from the general direction of the living room.

I barely blinked.

"Gazzy and Iggy just threw a fruit bowl at Nudge. She dodged it, but now she's chasing them around the living room," Angel, our resident mind reader, announced.

I sighed.

Time to become Super Mom.

Again.

I stood up, sliding Angel off of my lap. I looked at her, making a mental note to check on her health later, and then I strode into the living room. "What's going on here?" I asked, in the most menacing voice I could think up.

I glared around the room.

Three guilty bird kids looked back at me, all of them in them holding food in preparation of throwing. I smacked my hand to my forehead.

How does it ALWAYS turn into a food fight?

"Alright, guys, fall in," I demanded in my most official Mom voice. Gazzy, Nudge, and even Iggy, who is my age, slinked in front of me.

I raised my eyebrows. "Explain," I prodded. They all began talking at once. I held up my hands. "One at a time." I pointed to Nudge, who was generally the most truthful. "Care to share?"

She began talking a million miles per hour, in classic Nudge form. "Well, Dylan and I were making one of our videos, and we were getting, like, totally into it, and it was really awesome and stuff, and then Gazzy came racing in there with his stink bombs and stuff, and he totally ruined my video. So I started to chase after him, not to hurt him or anything, just to, I dunno, tickle him to death, but then he and Iggy threw that bowl at me and it could have totally hit me in the head and given me a concussion and I could have died and it would be all their faults so I was gonna throw one eensy piece of bread at them to get them back and then you came in." She took a dramatic breath, and Gazzy took her momentary silence as an opportunity to put some of his side of the story into the mix.

He glared at Nudge and said: "If I remember right, you weren't just gonna _tickle_ me. Your exact words were "Gazzy get over here right now. You're _totally_ gonna pay for that."

Iggy laughed and high fived him. "You've got her voice down perfectly!"

Actually, he did. Add that to the weirdness factor- Gazzy could mimic any voice he's ever heard with perfect precision.

"So?" Nudge yelled back in defense. "Max said she was gonna turn you into a piñata and you didn't say anything to her!"

"Well unlike you, Max didn't chase me down with a _bat!"_

I rolled my eyes and turned my attention instead to the tall figure observing the drama from the doorway. Against my will, my heart began to beat faster. I told my heart to slow it down, because Dylan was _not _Fang, that was for sure.

At the mention of Fang's name, my heart gave a little lurch. I still couldn't believe he was gone. I'd been searching for him with mad intensity for the past month, but to no avail. Today was one of the rare days that I managed to forget about him for at least five minutes.

So much for that.

I swore that I would search forever for him, despite his warnings not to. But in reality, it didn't matter how much I wanted to find him- if Fang didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be found. Another power for the List of Strange: Fang had the maddening ability to go invisible, or at least blend into the shadows. For all I knew he could be watching all of us, right now, and I would have no clue. Even though I knew this wasn't true, I still scanned the room hopefully, pathetically. When my search revealed nothing, I sighed.

Dylan emerged from the doorway. "Um, "He said, biting his lip. "Does this mean we're not posting out video?"

Weird thing about the new kid- he had a mad awesome voice, and apparently, so did Nudge. Ever since the two of them discovered how good they sounded together, they'd been singing almost nonstop. Last month, they began a youtube channel where they sang, and it had become pretty popular.

"Dylan," Nudge said, horrified. "How could we upload that video? The camera was still running when Gazzy ran in, and it is _soo_ embarrassing."

That's when Iggy smiled evilly.

Never a good sign.

"Oh, that? I uploaded that to your channel ten minutes ago. It's already gotten quite a few hits." Nudge's chocolate eyes grew wide. "You didn't."

Iggy smiled at her maddeningly, and Nudge was about to attack him when a panicked voice interrupted us.

"Max, MAX!" It was Gazzy, and he was standing over Angel, who was passed out on the ground. We all rushed to her side. I grabbed her shoulders. "Angel. Angel honey, what's wrong?" She didn't respond. Her eyeballs fluttered around in their sockets, and her body twitched a few times, but she didn't wake up. "Angel," I repeated, panicked, "What's-"

And then, something happened that scared me even more than anything ever had before.

Which is scary in itself.

When I grabbed Angel, my mind suddenly went blank. Not just hazy- totally and completely blank, as if somebody had erased all thought from my head. I stayed that way for the smallest fraction of a second, and then I felt a kind of rushing, floating sensation, and suddenly…everything in front of me disappeared. One second I was kneeling on the floor of my house with four worried bird kids staring at me, and the next…I just wasn't.

I found myself in a moonlit clearing, which would have been disorienting enough, if not for the countless enemies surrounding me. Everywhere I looked, there were big guys with guns. I tried to fly away, but something was holding me down. I almost went into full on panic mode, until I realized that these guys weren't looking at me. I directed my attention to the same spot they were staring at…and my heart almost stopped. Standing there, looking just as he had the day he broke my heart, was Fang. His face was streaked with dirt, and he looked like he had just been dragged through a puddle of mud, but he was still the hottest boy I'd ever seen. Standing next to him were two kids I'd never seen before- a pretty Asian girl and a skinny blond boy. The three of them had the look I knew all too well- they were used to being hunted.

Before I could even call out to Fang, a gruff voice to my left shouted "Fire". Two hundred triggers were pulled, guns aimed at the little group of three.

"Fang," I screamed, but my voice was whisked away. I felt the same strange sensation I'd felt just moments before in the house, and seconds later, the clearing was gone.

This time, when I looked around to get my bearings, I was pleased to find that I wasn't under attack.

Which was a nice change.

Once I realized that there were no bloodthirsty psychopaths trying to kill me, I took in my surroundings and discovered that I was in one of my favorite places in the world- my mom's house, complete with the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies.

"Hey, Max,"

I turned around to find my half- sister, Ella, walking towards me. I was so relieved to see her face after all the weirdness of the day that I ran towards her for a hug.

"Ella, what's going on? I-"

I paused when I realized that Ella wasn't smiling. She kept marching towards me, and I realized that she was walking jerkily, like a robot.

That's when I noticed the knife in her hand.

"Ella, what-"

"Goodbye, Max," Ella whispered.

She brought the knife up to stab me in the chest, and then everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Well, here's another chapter! Enjoy :)**

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Waking up after being unconscious for awhile is not a pleasant feeling. It's kind of like emerging from a deep, dark pool after a few hours, minus the sense that you've turned into a giant prune, but with the added bonus of a killer headache and a sensitivity to bright lights.

"Ow," I muttered as I groggily rejoined the world of the conscious.

"Max!"

Before I could even open my eyes, I became subject to an excited bird kid pile- up.

"Ah!"

I forced my eyes open and found Nudge and Gazzy stacked on top of me.

"Alright, get off, you goofs." I shook them off and sat up, clutching my aching head.

When I got my eyes fully opened, I realized that there were only four people staring at me. "Where's-"

I looked to my right and found that Angel was still passed out on the floor. I rushed to her side and put her head in my lap.

I looked up at my flock (plus Dylan) accusingly.

"Why is nobody trying to help her? She's unconscious or something and-"

"Relax, Max," Iggy said. "We were worried, but...well, she's not unconscious anymore. I think whatever happened tired her out. She fell asleep."

I looked down at Angel and smoothed out her hair. Now that I looked at her closely, she was breathing evenly, and seemed calmer, more peaceful. I took a deep breath, relieved that she was okay.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped when I realized it was Dylan's.

"When Angel fell asleep, we were worried about you, 'cuz you were shaking," he said, concern in his blue eyes. I didn't respond, just continued glaring at his hand. He removed it sheepishly.

Good choice.

I looked up at everyone.

"How long was I out?" I asked quietly.

Gazzy checked the clock on the wall. "About five minutes."

"We were kinda scared," Nudge piped in, her brown eyes wide. "With both you and Angel out…" She didn't finish her sentence.

None of us really liked to admit weaknesses out loud, so I knew the flock must have been pretty shaken up for any of them to confess that they were scared.

I drew Nudge closer to me, and forced a laugh. "It's okay. I'm fine," I said.

Well, I wasn't exactly known for telling the truth.

I had no idea what had just happened, and what I had seen freaked me out. I flashed to Fang getting shot at, and Ella coming at me with a knife. I barely suppressed a shiver.

To cover up my horror, I stood up and began to boss everyone around like I always did, getting everything back to whatever normalcy reigned in our crazy house.

"Gazzy, clean up the fruit. Ig, take down the video of Dylan and Nudge-" I lowered my voice. "If you don't, you know Nudge will find a way to do something way worse- the computer is her element, so pissing her off using cyberspace is not such a good idea."

Iggy raised his eyebrows.

"Good point."

The boys walked off to do their various assignments, leaving me with Nudge.

I looked at Nudge, who still looked a bit shaken.

"I'm okay, sweetie, I promise." I smiled at her.

"Go help Gazzy pick up the pieces of the bowl, okay?"

She probably would have protested, but considering how happy she was that I wasn't still passed out, she obliged.

I picked Angel up and began carrying her to her room. It wasn't until I had crossed the threshold that I sensed someone behind me. I whirled around and saw Dylan standing there.

"Need any help?"

"No," I almost snarled.

It probably wasn't very fair of me to be so mean to him. I mean, it wasn't his fault that he was _made_ to be (cringe) _perfect_ for me, or that now that Fang was gone, it almost seemed like he was taking his place.

Our flock was like a perfect circle, totally complete. When Dylan arrived, he hovered somewhere outside of the circle- visible, but clearly an outsider. Then Fang left, leaving a gaping hole in his place. Now, Dylan was in an awkward position- still kind of outside, but with a clear view of everything going on inside through the hole left by Fang. It was only natural that he might start to automatically gravitate towards the hole.

"Do you need something, or are you just going to stand there like a sack of potatoes?"

Like I said, it probably wasn't very fair of me to be so mean to him. Too bad I didn't really care about silly words like "fair".

"Um…I…just wanted to make sure you were alright." I turned away from him and put Angel gently into her bed.

"I'm fine," I said tightly.

He looked at me skeptically.

"You sure? I mean, back there, you put on a brave face, but you kind of looked really shaken up-"

I whirled around to glare at him, and something inside me just snapped. I let lose on him in one of my signature "Max-is-about-to-hurt-someone's-feelings-for-almost-no-reason" moments.

"You have no _idea _what's going on with me," I began angrily. "Don't pretend for one second that you have even the slightest clue that you know me. Because news flash, new kid- I just met you. I'm still tolerating you, but honestly, if you keep pretending that we're all buddy buddy, I'm kicking your little feathery butt straight out of here, and I won't even care if I never see you again." I paused, and lowered my voice darkly. "Because you barely even know my name, so don't delude yourself into thinking that you can know me better than I know myself."

And with that, I left the new bird kid on the block standing in the doorway, no doubt feeling more unwelcome than ever. He probably felt better than I did, though- I was still totally confused as to what had gone on with me and Angel, and the Fang and Ella things had terrified me.

But what scared me most of all was Dylan. In reality, I knew why I had freaked out at him. The truth was, there had never, _ever _been anyone who could see through me when I was pretending to be strong. The only exception to that had been Fang. Now that he was gone, I had assumed that I'd be able to keep my true feelings from everybody else, but Dylan had torn through my disguise like it was tissue paper. He had seen a weakness in me, and that absolutely freaked me out. Why? Well, partly because it seemed like he was taking something that belonged to Fang, and partly because, though I could never even imagine admitting it, there was a part of me that didn't really mind.

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**A/N: Please review! It would make my day. :)**


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